Remember the "OBAMACARE FORCING CO'S TO CUT BACK ON EMPLOYEE HOURS!" Attacks?

A new study further undercuts a major claim by critics of the Affordable Care Act, who contended that the law would encourage companies to slash full-time workers' hours and shift them into part-time work in order to avoid having to offer them health insurance.

The study "found little evidence that the ACA had caused increases in part-time employment as of 2015," according to a summary of its findings published in the journal Health Affairs on Tuesday.

"We can say with a large degree of confidence that there is nothing we can see nationwide when we look at the whole workforce" that would support a claim that the so-called employer mandate or other Obamacare features have led to increases in part-time employment at the expense of full-time jobs, said Kosali Simon, a professor at Indiana University, and a co-author of the report.

Simon noted that even the slight shifts to part-time employment from full-time jobs — of just about 0.5 percent from 2013 to 2015 — in two subgroups could not be attributed to the Obamacare employer mandate. Those subgroups are people with no more than a high school degree, and workers between the age of 60 and 64.

...A related analysis released Tuesday also found that the expansion of Medicaid benefits to more poor adults in the United States — a crucial component of Obamacare — did not lead to job reductions or other significant employment changes in 2014, when the Medicaid expansion's effects began being broadly felt.

Obamacare's purported negative effect on employment has been a consistent argument by opponents of the health-care reform law, which is designed to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.